Hello world, how have your first three weeks of the new year been?
My apologies for the lack of updates in the last month! I know none of these are particularly new anymore by now, but anyway: Here are three of my favorite remixes right now.
Enjoy some selected minimalist acoustic christmas tunes by Erlend Øye (Kings of Convenience, Whitest Boy Alive), E (Eels) and more. I guarantee you peaceful Christmas atmosphere if you fire up this playlist at medium to low volume on your living room stereo. Happy holidays, everyone!
15. Young The Giant - Young The Giant //Country: US //Favorite tracks: My Body, Cough Syrup, I Got
Very promising debut album from energetic indie rockers, reminiscent of the debuts of artists such as Franz Ferdinand, The Killers and The Strokes. Read more, or watch the video for my favorite song:
14. Jónsi - Go //Country: Iceland //Favorite tracks: Kolniður, Hengilás, Boy Lilikoi
Sigur Rós' vocalist Jónsi is way too happy these days to make melancholic, dark and dramatic post-rock, it seems. We could already sense this in the band's 2008 album Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust, which was much more upbeat and cheerful than before, only occasionally diving into Jónsi's trademark melancholy. When he released his debut solo album this year, the recipe was exactly the same: happier and more fast-paced music. Turning solo also allowed him to explore several things that were harder to do under the Sigur Rós moniker, namely a complete overhaul of instruments and soundscape, and singing in English instead of Iceland or 'Hopelandic'. Check out the beautiful unofficial video for Kolniður below. It's basically shamelessly copying the style of Sigur Rós' Heima DVD, but I don't care - slow images of picturesque landscapes is what still works the best together with Jónsi's magical voice.
My favorite Jónsi song of 2010 is however not on this album! Check out the almost painfully beautiful 'Icicle Sleeve', a song that for some unfathomable reason didn't make the album, but has been played live on this year's tour:
Damon Albarn and his many friends jump from genre to genre in this very eclectic album that just about anyone can find something they enjoy on. Hip hop legend, 60s/70s alternative rocker, and Swedish-Japanese indietronica singer - an amazingly diverse mixture of artists joined in on Albarn's project this time around, and contributed with their vocals. If you've ever found yourself at a party with a diverse musical crowd in 2010, you'll know that Plastic Beach has the rare gift of bringing together the indie kids, the electronica purists and the hip hoppers in front of the stereo, singing along to the lyrics in peaceful unison. This album is so full of hit material that it's hard to pick any favorite tracks - from the amazing buildup of electronica track 'Empire Ants', to Lou Reed's incredibly cool and nonchalant rapping on 'Some Kind of Nature', there are too many great moments to choose from. But I do know that this is the video I'll always remember this album for, and also that this is the song that will always come to my mind first when I think about the spectacular Gorillaz show I saw this summer:
12. Röyksopp - Senior //Country: Norway //Favorite tracks: Senior Living, The Alcoholic, The Drug
For their fourth album, the Norwegian electronica duo went back to their roots - instrumental and atmospheric chillout music. After two albums of vocal heavy electro pop, they returned to their debut album's magical and at times even eerie soundscapes. The latter dominated on this year's album, as it's apparently inspired by darkness, drugs and … senior citizens. Read more, or check out the mesmerizing video for 'The Drug':
11. Vampire Weekend - Contra //Country: US //Favorite tracks: Horchata, Holiday, Cousins, White Sky
Ah, the sophomore album - it's never an easy task, and as for indie phenomenas MGMT and Vampire Weekend, we saw two very different approaches this year. While I very much respected MGMT's decision to not just follow the same formula as on their very hyped debut album, with the high risk of disappointing their fans by failing to re-create the debut's magic, I equally respect Vampire Weekend for just giving it a shot - and actually succeeding! The 2007 self-titled debut included lesson after lesson in magical pop song writing, with afropop rhythms that never tried to hide its very obvious strong Paul Simon influences. This year's album includes … exactly the same. And the same number of unforgettable songs. Check out my favorite song now:
20. Nóra - Er Einhver Að Hlusta? //Country: Iceland //Favorite tracks: Opin Fyrir Morði, Sjónskekkja, Skóflaðu Mér
Nóra's five multi-instrumentalists don't only play an impressive amount of different instruments on their debut album, they also wander through an impressively large number of styles. The male vocalist Egill and the female vocalist, his sister Auður, take us through ambitious Arcade Fire-style theatrical-sounding indie, Belle and Sebastian-sounding modest twee, a dark Radiohead-esque song, Nordic folk music and more through the album's fifty minutes of playful Icelandic pop. Download one of my favorite songs now:
19. Hot Chip - One Life Stand //Country: UK //Favorite tracks:Take It In, One Life Stand
While I feel that Hot Chip's latest effort in some was a disappointment compared to 2008's amazing Made In The Dark, it is still one of the albums I enjoyed the most this year. When the band released 'One Life Stand' as a preview track in late 2010, I got really hyped - while the track name surely is dorky, and the lyrics as well, they're both so incredibly and unresitably sweet. Hot Chip's short, geeky and shy front figure Alexis Taylor has always seemed like a major romantic to me. When I worked as backstage crew at a Hot Chip concert once, my suspicions were confirmed: I didn't find a wrecked backstage area afterwards, and no signs of wild partying with the local groupies - I found a clean and tidy room with a neat table with nothing to dispose of but a few burnt-out candles, as Taylor apparently had spent a romantic and relaxing evening backstage with his wife, who he of course had brought along abroad.
The whole album is chock full of warm declarations of love the title track's, but at the first listen, I didn't find any tracks that could match the title track's brilliance - until I reached the very end. After a few less convincing tracks, the album ends on the ingenious 'Take It In' - which is not only perfect album closer, but in my opinion also possibly the best song in Hot Chip's entire career. I continued listening to the album, and it grew on me more and more through time. After almost a whole year constantly on my iPod, 'Take It In' still feels as powerful, as fresh and as perfect as when I first heard it. Download it now, and you'll see what I'm talking about:
18. Two Door Cinema Club - Tourist History //Country: UK //Favorite tracks: Something Good Can Work, I Can Talk, Eat That up, It's Good for You
Uncomplicated, danceable and uplifting indie rock that any fan of bands like Phoenix, The Wombats or early Bloc Party will appreciate. Read more, or just watch the video below :
17. Holy Fuck - Latin //Country: Canada //Favorite tracks: Red Lights, Silva & Grimes, Latin America
Holy Fuck is lo-fi electronic music with no programmed elements, that feels like some sort of danceable electronic post-rock. Latin's their third album, and possibly their most intense one yet. Read more, or just check out the epic video for 'Latin America' below, which includes live footage, a video diary of the band exploring Japan, and very sweet lightning and color effects:
16. Seabear - We Built A Fire //Country: Iceland //Favorite tracks: I'll Build You A Fire, In Winter's Eyes, Wolfboy
The Icelandic folk-ish indie poppers return with a sophomore album that mostly revisits the themes, moods and soundscapes of the first. But on some tracks, electric guitars and drums are given a bigger presence than on the very acoustic first album. To me, this has been the perfect album for slow and relaxing Saturday/Sunday mornings, and it's filled with charming and soothing songs that are impossible to dislike. Seabear should be checked out by any fan of fellow countrymen múm's later and more poppy albums. Check out the colorful and beautiful little video for 'I'll Build You a Fire':
It's winter again, it's starting to get ridiculously cold again, and once again I'm turning to Grizzly Bear. Where I live, it's been creeping down to 3.2 degrees Fahrenheit / minus 16 degrees Celcius recently, and most of all I just feel like crawling down into some warm place and hibernate until spring, bear style. Since I'm not able to do that, however, turning to the slow and warming sounds of the four Brooklyn bears once more is a good second option.
You've probably all heard the band's three studio albums that are playing on repeat on my speakers these days, but I thought I'd share two rarer tracks with you today. Both are Grizzly Bear doing beautiful interpretations of songs by two of my other favorite bands. In the first, they turn one of the most easily overlooked tracks from of Montreal's most overlooked album into an amazingly atmospheric and layered little beauty, perfectly juxtaposing the soft Barnes vocals of the minimalist original with lush Grizzly Bear-esque soundscapes. In the second, they turn one of Hot Chip's very best, the electronic and synth-driven - and strangely uplifting - Boy From School, into a melancholic and mostly acoustic piece that relies almost exclusively on the beautiful and strong vocals, rather than electronic beat.
Hope you'll enjoy them! And continue to enjoy (or perhaps even discover or rediscover?) Grizzly Bear.
The career development and evolution of musical style that Bloc Party's Kele has gone through is pretty much a typical nightmare scenario for lo-fi enthusiasts or any strict rock fan who frowns upon drum machines and electronic beats. While Bloc Party's promising earlier EPs and classic debut Silent Alarm saw them mostly wander in rough, unpolished post-punk landscapes driven by dirty guitar solos/riffs, the band took a turn towards slick studio production in the sophomore album Weekend in the City. Then, in the stand-alone singles Flux and One More Chance, and the third and final studio album Intimacy, Kele's growing love for danceable club music made the band delve deeper and deeper into electronic music.
Many old fans were disappointed by this turn, as so many of these all-electronic synth-driven tracks made a total waste of the incredible guitar skills of lead guitarist Russel Lisack, which arguably was one of the band's major trademarks in the early period of their career. While I can agree with those missing Lissack's soaring guitar solos, I for one actually really enjoy Kele's electronic material. It makes a lot of sense that Bloc Party now have (de facto) disbanded (they've officially been on hiatus for about a year) and that Kele has started up an electronic solo project, while Russel Lisack's makes use of his guitar skills on, among other things, Ash's live shows.
Above, you can download two of my favorite danceable electronic Bloc Party tracks, plus another two tracks from Kele's solo album that are stylistically quite close.
Turn down the lights, take it easy and enjoy these two chillout remixes. Eat More Cake are a four-piece electronica band from London, here doing a very sweet take on Stardust's 1998 French house classic. Kevin Drew and Ohad Benchetrit are two of the many members of supergroup Broken Social Scene, and here they add their personal touch to one of my favorite tracks off their own band's latest album, Forgiveness Rock Record.
Here are the two originals:
Classic music video that takes me right back to elementary school.
In my opinion, three of 2007's very best and most memorable albums were Arcade Fire's Neon Bible, Panda Bear's Person Pitch and Klaxons Myths of the near Future. All three generated absolutely massive hype, and harvested top scores from record reviewers and/or prizes. Since then, however, it's been been quiet around these three artists. (Well, in Panda Bear's case it's just been the 'Panda Bear project' that's been quiet, as his band Animal Collective have almost constantly been in the spotlight, and enjoyed endless amounts of attention)
Now, the follow-up albums are finally on their way! I got my hands on leaked tracks by all three artists this week, and they're all very promising sounding. I think it's going to be a great autumn for alternative music!
//// New Arcade Fire: The Suburbs and Month of May
While Funeral balanced between the down-to-earth and the loud and pompous, Neon Bible mostly stayed within the latter style, filled to the brim with dramatic church organs and anthemic choruses. If these first two tracks are anything to go by, The Suburbs takes a step down again: 'The Suburbs' is slow, unpretentious and beautiful, while 'Month of May' in my opinion sounds like the most straight-forward rock and roll track Arcade Fire have ever recorded - in a good way!
The Suburbs is out August 2 in Europe and August 3 in the US.
This sounds like the darker moments of Myths of the Near Future, and I love it. Nothing very unusual or surprising here, but it doesn't sound old either. What is really unusual and rare, is that the four young sophisticated Brits didn't name the song something that's a literary reference! Announcing their return as "here comes the flashover" is pretty badass/cute, though. Good to have you back, guys!
Person Pitch was a dreamy sounding piece of sample patchwork, and it sounds like Panda Bear is continuing the same trend in this year's release. He's been playing a couple of solo shows the last month, presenting a lot of new material. Unfortunaly there are no studio versions available yet, but I'm sure they'll start surfacing soon, with the album only four months away from release. For now, enjoy this live version of the album's title track!
Jónsi, the modest, shy and low-talking frontman of Icelandic postrockers Sigur Rós, is releasing his first solo album Go on April 5th. In this track from the much-anticipated album, he once again showcases his charismatic, confident and very strong voice. The musical arrangement is now slightly different from Sigur Rós, but Jónsi's songwriting talent and amazing vocal performance are as strong and mesmerizing as ever – the only difference being that it's now all in English, and not his native language Icelandic or his self-invented language "hopelandic". Although I'm sad that Sigur Rós most likely has come to an end as a band, I can't wait to get my hands on Go – its release is for me just as big of an even as any Sigur Rós main release. The last time the eccentric, charismatic and hyper-creative vocalist of a truly world-famous Icelandic band went solo, Bjørk of The Sugarcubes, it was not the end of anything, but rather the start of an even more amazing career. I don't think anything can stop the very talented Jónsi from going down the same path from now!
Northern Irish indie pop band Two Door Cinema Club plays happy, uplifting and catchy guitar pop that's perfect for the sunny spring weather I (and hopefully all you readers) am enjoying at the moment. Two Door Cinema Club's debut album Tourist History was released on one of my favorite labels, the French indie/electro label Kitsuné Records, on March 1st. It has often been compared to Foals and Bloc Party's debut albums, and I can see the similarity – like these fellow UK indie rock debut albums, Tourist History also incorporates elements of post-punk sound with dance-oriented melodies for a fresh and young sounding LP.
Time to introduce lots of new releases here on Esoteric Mumblings again! Here are some newly released songs that I'm currently enjoying a lot.
mp3: Broken Social Scene - All to All(mp3 download removed)
First off, another new track from Canadian indie collective Broken Social Scene's upcoming fourth studio album, Forgiveness Rock Record. All to All came out as a digital single yesterday, and I like it a lot. With its lush, atmospheric and ambient sound, combined with very sweet female vocals, it reminds me of the classic Broken Social Scene track "Anthems for a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl" from their 2002 album You Forgot it in People. If the three tracks (from the album's thirteen) released so far are anything to go by, the new album will be another eclectic mix of genres and moods – BSS at their best, in other words!
mp3: MGMT - Flash Delirium(mp3 download removed)
In my opinion MGMT sounded a lot like the Flaming Lips on their debut album Oracular Spectacular (2007), with their euphoric psychedelic rock, and also thanks to the production work by long-time Flaming Lips producer David Fridman. While the Flaming Lips moved in a quite different direction with last year's Embryonic, MGMT's new track "Flash Delirium", from their upcoming sophomore album Congratulations, due out April 13th, in my opinion sounds more like the Yoshimi / Mystics era (former half of the 00s) Flaming Lips now than ever. I can also sense a stronger influence from trippy 60s psychedelic rock, and less disco beat and 90s britrock nudges, this time around. This track left me very excited for MGMT's return!
mp3: Foals - Spanish Sahara(mp3 download removed)
Post-punk/indie rock band Foals from Oxford, England, released their very funky and danceable debut album Antidotes in 2008, which was one of my favorite albums that year. The album was full of vigor and punch, and when I saw them live in the spring of 2008, their almost endless-seeming energy impressed me. Their sophomore album Total Life Forever is due out in May, and judging by the album title alone one would expect it to be even more energetic than before. But this time, Foals have slowed down a bit, and switched danceable indie anthems for slower and more modest, atmospheric and reflective tunes. According to the band, they had been planning another "funky" album, but then plans changed. The first track from the album, Spanish Sahara, indicates that this new style suits them just as well, and although the soundscape is rather different now, it still unmistakably sounds like Foals.
Iggy Pop is an artist that I just keep going back to, again and again. Apart from his work with his band The Stooges, Pop has also led an amazing solo career. His first two solo efforts, Lust for Life and The Idiot are possibly my favorite albums of the 70s.
Iggy Pop is arguably one of the biggest living musical legends on the planet today. Iggy is the grandfather, king and pretty much inventor of punk music. His live shows are legendary: The raw, bare-chested, sweaty, drunken bravado at his shows in the 60s/70s have been an inspiration for punk and rock performers ever since, and an endless hoard of people have since attempted to be as kick-ass as him - which is an impossible task, of course.
After inventing his raw stage persona as the vocalist for his band The Stooges, he left the band to go solo, and then something unusual happened: he actually made even better music. In 1977 he releaed his first two solo albums, Lust for Life and The Idiot, with only a half year interval. Lust for Life is the most famous of the two, with its iconic album cover featuring Iggy's creepy and manic smile brimming at you. From the very first track (which is also the title track), you know you're in for something special: In what I honestly think is one of the best opening tracks ever made, the song comes right at you with its intense drums, and the heavy bass and Iggy's nonchalant vocals carry you through five powerful and legendary minutes.
Pop is still as active as ever today. In what has to be one of my favorite singles of 2009, he teamed up with the BPA, also known as Fatboy Slim, to record a cover of The Monochrome Set's "He's Frank". This song is an awesome meeting of two talents, and almost as good as Pop's former US-UK collaboration - which was in the 70s and with David Bowie. (Bowie wrote songs for Lust for Life and The Idiot). The song's video is awesome too, and conveniently also has a puppet theme that fits well into this blog!
The Beta Band were a commercially underappreciated band from Britain. They performed a blend of psychedelic rock, trip-hop, and electronica that critics creamed over.
Mp3's come from a collection of their early EP's. "Dogs Got A Bone" is a personal favorite.
David E. Sugar is an indie electronica artist from the UK who's released a few quality EPs, singles and standalone tracks in the past couple of years. He started out as an 8-bit chipcore artist programming songs on his Gameboy, but has since evolved to his unique sound of today, somewhere between house and chipcore, but with a dash of guitars and his own vocal work. His tracks are catchy and danceable, and I hope he'll take the step into making a full-length album soon. It's not going to happen this year, though - he has another, perhaps even bigger, project going. Sugar's ambitious project for 2009 consists of releasing 12 (!) little EPs on his own record label, one for each month. His fourth EP just came out, so it looks like the he's keeping up to his promise of hyper-productivity. One to watch out for!
Esoteric Mumblings is a multimedia blog centered in Athens, GA. We'll post songs and videos from artists of interest, both up and coming as well as those that are now long gone.
If you are an artist or label representative and dislike the free publicity of your band, please e-mail us at chrysanthemum.music@gmail.com and we'll have it removed.
